The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks Essay Example

The Lucky One opens when two very different men meet. Deputy Keith Clayton is a sleaze who is sneaking through the North Carolina underbrush in order to take pictures of a group of skinny-dipping coeds. When one of the coeds comes face to face with him, Clayton chucks the camera under a bush. He's also startled to meet a stranger toting a backpack and accompanied by a German shepherd dog. Clayton suspects that the man may have seen him taking his snapshots. The young camper is named Logan Thibault, and although a check reveals no wrongdoing on the stranger's part, Clayton does not like him. His hatred is intensified when, after letting Logan continue on, Clayton can't find his camera and he discovers slashed tires on his vehicle. What sequence of events brought Logan to North Carolina? He fought in Iraq as a marine. On his third tour of duty, he discovered a photograph of a beautiful young woman at a county fair. When no one claimed the picture, he kept it. Soon, he began winning at poker. He also managed to survive the deadliest war battles. Could his friend Victor have been correct when he said that the woman in the photo was Logan's lucky charm? After he leaves the Marines, Logan experiences a profound tragedy that spurs him to find the mysterious woman in the picture. He can deduce a few clues from the photograph, so he takes his German shepherd, Zeus, and begins walking with only a pack on his back. When he finally reaches Hampton, North Carolina, immediately after his encounter with Deputy Clayton, he has a feeling that he is nearing the end of his quest. Sure enough, when he shows the photograph to locals, they inform him who the woman is: Beth Green, a schoolteacher and mother who lives with her grandmother at the family dog kennels. They also warn him that Beth is off-limits; she has an ex-husband who no one wants to mess with. When Logan finds Beth, she is taking care of her grandmother and her son, Ben. Grandmother Nana is a colorful